Narrative Approaches to the Holocaust: A Pivotal Decade in Seghers’s Oeuvre

Abstract

AbstractSeghers was one of the first of her generation to write about the Holocaust. Her response to the destruction of European Jewry was immediate and persistent. The essay discusses her novels Transit and Die Toten bleiben jung as well as shorter works, with particular attention to “Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen,” “Post ins gelobte Land,” and “Das Ende” (1943-1945). Together, these three tales stand as Seghers’s unequivocal statement about the Holocaust. Yet each has its distinct thematic focus, prose form, and narrative style – as if to tell us there is no one adequate or authentic way to write about the Holocaust. No other German writer from this time wrote more about the Holocaust and the events surrounding it than did Seghers.